Chapter One

 

The difference between the rich and the wealthy is that the wealthy can basically buy the merely rich. The wealthy are the people the rich suck up to. You learn that fairly quickly on the French Riviera, where I like to hang out. The culture is so deliciously free of things like modesty and inhibitions and restraint. It's very hedonistic and free.

Of course, nothing else on the Riviera is free. The food certainly isn't free, nor is the housing. As for the clothes, it amazing what the rich will spend on clothes, never mind the wealthy.

Alas, I am neither rich nor wealthy. I'm just a poor American peasant (all Americans are peasants in the eyes of the French anyway of course). And I wasn't on the Riviera as part of the beautiful people but because I worked as a waitress in a restaurant there. It was a gorgeous restaurant full of gorgeous food and gorgeous people. And so, it liked to hire gorgeous waitresses.

I'm not being immodest. You can't not know, in this society, whether you measure up to the standards of beauty currently in vogue or not. No one will let you escape that fact, be it good or bad. I've been told how pretty/cute/beautiful/hot/sexy/gorgeous I am since I was five. Only the adjectives have changed as I grew older.

I've been recruited, and tried modeling, but I just don't have the mindset which lets me sit around for literally hours at a time, day after day, while people mess with my hair and makeup. Nor am I good at sucking up to the elitist twerps who make up the fashion industry, male (mostly gay) or female (mostly bitches).

But I'm also not all that ambitious. I mean, here's the thing, I've never really had to put a lot of thought into my life, into what I wanted to do, or go, or become. I've never had to have much in the way of drive. You see, when I was younger, my parents controlled everything about my life. They were both control freaks, and barely a minute of my day wasn't scheduled. All my time was directed into some sort of 'learning experience' meant to enhance and educate me as a person, and make me a little robot like they were.

Then I became a teenager, and discovered sex. More to the point, I discovered that lots of people wanted to have me around, mostly, I think, because I was beautiful. So my life became one of deciding which of the numerous offers currently being made to me sounded the most interesting, the most fun, the most diverting from my otherwise boring, parent-controlled existence. I never had to think "Gee, I wonder what I can do today", or anything like that.

It took my until my second year in pre-law before I rebelled against my parents and my studious existence. I was nearly twenty at the time, and instead of returning to school in the fall - after a summer of working as an intern in my father's company - I instead flew to Australia and took up surfing, working in a beach-side souvenir shop. My parents went insane when they found out, but there wasn't a lot they could do about it.

I took up beach volleyball a year later, and that was what led me to Europe, with a team which went to France. I never returned, staying around to get a job as at a cafe, and enjoy the hedonistic, laid back lifestyle. The French are arrogant bastards, but on the Riviera, so is everyone else. But that's all water off a duck's back to me. When you look like I do people assume you're dumb and talk over your head.

My hair is very blonde in its natural state, and I have very fair skin. I've tried a number of other colors, though, and at the moment it's a deep blood red, hanging straight, and well past my shoulders. I'm tall, lithe, and athletic enough to keep up with the crazed members of my beach volleyball team, but not enough to be a star. I just don't put the effort into it they do, and I won't exercise and train like they do.

Hey, I have breasts and curves, and I like them. I'm not interested in exercising myself into a rigid, wiry boy-like piece of human gristle. They say I don't have the drive, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind not being a star. I'm content to ride along in a supporting role. All I want is to have some fun. That's why I left home, after all, because I was deprived of it my entire life.

And to have fun on the Riviera, you mostly have to either be rich, or be beautiful. Since I wasn't rich, my beauty was my currency. It got me invited onto yachts and to parties where the fashionable set relaxed and enjoyed themselves.

And that was where I met Gerard.

The party was at a fabulous villa on a hill overlooking the ocean. It was a pool party, and I had no illusions about why I was invited. I was there as background filler. Because, you know, not all the beautiful people are really all that beautiful. Most of them are plump or graying, or sagging, or jowly, or balding, or whatever. They like to have pretty girls around at their parties. Pretty girls are like a fashion accessory. Every rich guy wants to have some around him to make himself look sexy, even if he's not.

Does that sound cynical? Jaded? I've been working at the Riviera for three years. You better believe I'm cynical and jaded. Heck, I was even considering going home, trying to patch things up with my parents, reaching some kind of accommodation which would send me back to school on my terms.

The villa was three centuries old. The pool was considerably newer and took up a considerable portion of the yard - though 'yard' doesn't do it justice. A waist high stone wall ran around the edge of a sheer cliff which plunged thirty meters to a roadway below. On the left side, the land rose up steeply, the mountain rising. A kind of rough stone stairway had been chopped into the stone at that point, long ago, which went down to the roadway.

I was bored, buzzed, and wandering along the wall, considering my options and enjoying the view out over the town and ocean below. It was dimly lit away from the pool, and as I reached the point where the wall disappeared into a sort of shadowed doorway, I hesitated. I looked at the old, rough, stone doorway doubtfully, then eased into it to find a ten foot space which then led to the stairs down.

I eased deeper into it, enjoying the darkness, though of course, I could see out over the wall to the lights of the city, and there were a few dim bulbs strung along a cord up high along the ceiling. I examined the stairs, but had no particular desire to go down, for that would mean then climbing back up. Why do that?

I sipped from my drink and looked out at the city, and wondered if I wanted to forsake all this for the dreary books of some university back home. Not particularly, in truth.

And then Gerard happened in. He was also holding a drink and, like myself, I supposed, just wandering, just wanting away from the beautiful people for a bit.

He was not dressed properly for a pool party. He was wearing a dark suit. His concession to the party was that his shirt was open and tie off. He was tall, and had nice shoulders, and as he passed one of the dim bulbs my dark adjusted eyes saw a face quite unlike most I encountered there. His face looked... rugged. I mean that though very handsome, he was far from pretty. That face had never been shaped by a knife, had never known skin sensitizers or exfoliates. It was the face of guy who ought to be carrying a sword and shield. Or maybe an ax.

His short, but thick brown hair was unkempt and swept aside. He had a close cropped beard and mustache, and his eyes were dark and penetrating. He had full lips, though, very full lips.

"Bored of the party?"

His voice matched his face, deep, rugged, confident, in a careless sort of way. It was also accented. That is, he spoke French, quite well too, but it was obviously not his native tongue. He was mid-thirties, and his voice was that of a man who'd had lots of beautiful girls and so, while appreciating them, wasn't terribly impressed.

And in my little black thong bikini, believe me, I was impressive, at least, in full light. Even in the dim light there the contrast with my lightly tanned skin would have been notable. And the bikini was showing a decent amount of cleavage which his eyes took in but didn't fixate on.

"I wanted a little quiet," I said, in English, judging his accent correctly. "The music was getting on my nerves."

"Yeah, Jacques has lousy taste in music," he said, reverting to London accented English.

"French centric," I said lightly.

"And there are so many bloody good French groups," he replied dryly.

I smiled lightly and we touched glasses to our mutual anglo arrogance.

"He does have a hell of a view, though," he said, turning and gazing out over the edge.

"Yes, well, the French can't take credit for that. They didn't invent it," I replied, easing back a little, leaning, if you will, against the stone wall behind him.

He turned, his eyes on me again.

"Do you think people should only take credit for what they're personally responsible for?"

I thought a moment, and nodded. "Yes."

He moved closer, and his face was shadowed.

"Do you take credit for being as beautiful as you are?" he asked.

It was a compliment but said in a way which conveyed no compliment. It was quite clever the way he did it. It was a sort of come-on, but not, accepting that my beauty wasn't really deniable, and simply referring to it naturally.

"I chose the hair coloring," I said, matching his dry voice with mine.

He gave a short bark of laughter.

"Everything else is natural," I said, as I started to feel a building sense of sexual tension.

And why not? I was bored, and he was an interesting appearing man, handsome, well-built, and seemed to have a measure of style. I was bored of Frenchmen anyway. Maybe I would move to London and see what life there was like.

"What I see is what I get?" he asked with a faint smile.

"What you see is what I got," I corrected. "I decide what anyone gets."

"And what factors affect your decisions?" he asked, his hand reaching out and casually brushing the hair back from my left eye.

"The mood I'm in, what style a man has, where I am."

He nodded, but his fingers had slid from my forehead, down along the side of my cheek, down along my neck, and across my shoulder. They were strong fingers, and left a warmth behind where they touched. I was suddenly feeling a little breathless, sensing an impending ... something.

"You know, in the old days, it was men who decided everything," he said. "Women were assigned to men by their families based on what was good for them."

"In the old days," I said with a shrug.

"Maybe better days in some way."

"If you're a cave man, I suppose."

He leaned in and kissed me. I was startled, and slightly irritated at his arrogance, but, well, it was an awfully good kiss.

"I wouldn't drag you around by the hair," he said, drawing back.

Then he took the glass gently from my hand, and tossed it behind him, over the edge. My mouth was open in a protest as he kissed me again, this time much more passionately. I heard the faint crash of the glass below as my hands rose up to press against his chest in instinctive defense, but I found I didn't really want to push him away as his tongue slipped into my mouth.

One of his hands was behind my head. The other slipped down onto my ass, which, for all intents and purposes, was naked save for the thin strip of cloth running between my buttocks. His body was hard and powerful beneath the soft silk-like fabric of his jacket, and I felt instantly overwhelmed, as the heat surged up between my legs and tightened my chest and nipples.

He drew back slightly, and then rubbed his face against my hair.

"Your hair looks like fire but feels like silk," he breathed.

Then he - attacked me! Well, kind of. His lips crushed mine and his body pressed me back against the cold stone and I felt utterly overwhelmed. I pushed against him, and he grabbed my wrists and shoved them up and back against the wall, then kind of looked at me, panting a little. I was breathing heavily myself, gasping, wide eyed as his shadowed face looked at me.

Then he leaned in and kissed me again, just as passionately, and pinned my wrists together above my head with one hand as he brought the other down to cup my breast and yank aside the cup of my bikini. I moaned dazedly into his mouth, pulse pounding in my throat as excitement and heat swept over me. I was no stranger to sex, but this was wild, animalistic and I felt some part of myself responding in a visceral fashion.

He pinched my nipple, and I let out a cry, muffled by his lips. Then his hands dove behind me, and I felt my bra loosening, then falling off as my breasts came free. My arms instinctively tried to cover myself but found the iron grip of his hand around my wrists, pinning them tightly, forcefully.

His other hand mauled my breasts, kneading the soft, throbbing flesh, rolling and stroking and pinching my nipples until they burned. Then his hand plunged down into the front of my little thong and I felt a wild shock as his fingers met my smooth, hairless sex. My clit exploded with sensation at his touch, his fingers warm and both rough and soft. Then as his fingers slid over my opening and became covered with the sudden rush of liquid heat they became slippery, and the feel of them riding over my clit overwhelmed my senses.

His mouth drew back, and I gulped in air, gasping and moaning as his fingers rubbed at me.

"Responsive little bitch, aren't you," he growled.